1.51-inch transparent OLED display works over GDI or SPI interface

transparent oled display

We’ve seen transparent, see-through displays at least since 2010 for retail applications, and over the years, these types of transparent displays or variants have made it to consumer devices like smartwatches and notch-free smartphones. But I don’t think I had ever seen transparent displays for the maker market, and DFRobot Fermion is 1.51-inch transparent OLED display with 128×64 resolution that is connected to the host MCU via SPI or GDI (General Display Interface) interface. Fermion specifications: 1.51-inch transparent OLED display with blue pixels based on SSD1309 driver Resolution – 128×64 (transparent part: 128×56) Display interface – 8-bit 68xx/80xx Parallel, 3-/4-wire SPI, I2C Adapter Interface – SPI, GDI Operating Voltage –  3.3V Dimensions Screen Size – 41.92 x 27.08mm Display Area – 35.05 x 15.32 mm Pixel Pitch – 0.274 x 0.274mm Pixel Size – 0.254 x 0.254mm Adapter Size – 18 x 28mm/0.71 x 1.10inch Temperature Range – -40~70°C There […]

E-Ink Digital Paper Tablet is about the size of an A4 or US Letter paper

E-Ink Digital Paper Displays

While there’s now a bunch of devices with an e-paper display, be it tablets or eReaders, it’s harder to find a model that is about the size of A4 (297 x 210mm) or US letter (279 x 216mm) papers. E-Ink Digitial Paper Tablet solves this issue with an NXP i.MX 8M Mini-powered Android 9 tablet offering a 13.3-inch display (301.1 x 222.8mm), as well as a smaller 10.1-inch display, for business applications. Both digital paper tablets feature E-Ink Carta 1250 screen technology with a higher contrast ratio and faster refresh rate, come with a digital pen supported by Wacom’s battery-free EMR technology, and are said to last about three weeks per charge for light usage. E-ink digital paper tablet specifications: SoC –  NXP i.MX 8M mini quad-core Cortex-A53 processor @ up to 1.8GHz Storage – 32 GB eMMC flash including 24GB for user data, or enough for about 10,000 typical […]

TIMI-130 – A breadboard color display with hundreds of pre-designed user interfaces

TIMI-130 color display breadboard

Tiny I2C, UART, or SPI displays are usually not difficult to connect to a breadboard with a few jumper cables, but Breadboard Mates TIMI-130 display makes that neater with a design made specifically for the breadboard, plus hundreds of pre-designed user interfaces/pages to simulate buttons, LED matrices, gauges, and other widgets. TIMI stands for Tiny Intelligent Modular Instrument, and TIMI-130 comes with a 1.3-inch color TFT IPS LCD, plus two 5-pin headers to power and connect the display to the breadboard through UART or I2C and update the widgets and values with simple commands. TIMI-130 specifications: Display driver – 4D Labs Pixxi-28 graphics processor with 14KB SRAM, 32KB flash Storage – 32MB flash Memory. Display – 240×240 pixel resolution TFT IPS LCD (non-touch). 2x 5-pin 2.54mm pitch headers with 3.3V (5V tolerant) serial UART interface (300 to 2187500 Baud). Master I2C (3.3V level) interface bus. 3x GPIO (3.3V level): 2x […]

Round color LCD board comes in Raspberry Pi RP2040 or ESP8266 flavor (Crowdfunding)

RoundyPi Roundy with Raspberry Pi RP2040

Roundy is a board with a 1.28-inch round color LCD with 240 x 240 resolution that is offered with either a Raspberry Pi RP2040 MCU or an ESP-12E WiFi module, with the variants respectively called RoundyPi and RoundyFi. Both boards come with a micro USB port for power and programming, a button for flashing the firmware, and six pins with power signals and four GPIOs. One difference is that the Raspberry Pi RP2040 board includes a MicroSD card for data storage. Roundy specifications: MCU / module RoundyPi – Raspberry Pi RP2040 dual-core Cortex-M0+ microcontroller @ up to 133 MHz with 256KB SRAM RoundyFi – ESP-12E module with ESP8266 microcontroller @ up to 160 MHz with 160KB SRAM, 4MB SPI flash External storage (RoundyPi only) – MicroSD card socket Display – 1.28-inch round LCD with 240 x 240 resolution, 65k colors; GC9A01 SPI display driver. (It appears to be that model) […]

Inkplate 6COLOR – A 5.8-inch e-paper color wireless display (Crowdfunding)

Inkplate 6COLOR

Inkplate 6COLOR is a 5.8-inch color e-paper display equipped with ESP32 WiSoC to provide WiFi and Bluetooth LE connectivity, and programmable with the Arduino IDE or MicroPython. We’ve covered Inkplate ESP32-based e-paper displays since Inkplate 6 was launched in 2019, and since then the company introduced a larger model and an upgraded variant with a touchscreen display and higher resolution. But so far, all were grayscale models, and Inkplate 6COLOR is the first to come with color, or more exactly 7 colors. Inkplate 6COLOR specifications: Wireless module with dual-core ESP32 processor, Wi-Fi 4 & Bluetooth 4.0 (BLE) connectivity External storage – MicroSD card socket Display  – 5.8-inch, 600 x 448 e-paper display with 7 colors (Black, White, Red, Yellow, Blue, Green, Orange) 128 DPI 25 seconds refresh time (manufacturer); tested by Inkplate: 10 to 11 seconds USB – 1x USB Type-C port for programming and power Expansion – Headers for […]

More Allwinner F1C200s ARM9 boards: MangoPi R3 and CherryPi-F1C200S

CherryPi-F1C200s board

I wrote about the Widora TINY200 board based on Allwinner F1C200s ARM9 processor with 64MB built-in RAM, up to 512MB NAND flash, LCD and camera interfaces in April 2020. I was just informed more similar Allwinner F1C200s boards had recently shown up with Widora MangoPi R3 that’s basically the same as TINY200, and CherryPi-F1C200S with similar dimensions and features, but a different ports arrangement. Let’s have a look at both. MangoPi R3 MangoPi R3 specifications are the same as the ones for Tiny200 board, but they selected the 128MB NAND flash storage option, and changed the USB-TTL chip: SoC – Allwinner F1C200s ARM926EJS processor @ 420 MHz (overclockable to 700 MHz) with 64MB DDR RAM Storage – 128MB NAND flash and MicroSD card slot Display I/F – 40-pin RGB565 display interface and 6-wire touch interface Camera I/F – 24-pin DVP camera interface compatible with OV2640, GC0328, etc. Audio – Onboard […]

Building a NanoPi M4V2 based All-in-One Linux PC running Armbian (Ubuntu/Debian)

Armbian Ubuntu All-in-One PC

At the end of my review of “RPI All-in-One” PC with Raspberry Pi 4, I noted the system also appeared to be compatible with NanoPi M4V2 single board computer. I’ve now tried it out, and assembling the board inside the 10.1-inch display is even easier than I initially thought. That means I now have a NanoPi M4V2 All-in-One PC running Ubuntu Hirsute or Debian Buster with XFCE desktop environment from Armbian, and most features work including the display and wireless connectivity, but I still have an issue with the touchscreen function. Here are the steps I followed initially: Download Armbian Buster XFCE image from Armbian and flash it to a microSD card with tools like USBimager. Insert the microSD card in the board Install the USB Type-C and HDMI-A adapters in the display. Insert the USB Type-C and HDMI port of the NanoPi M4V2 SBC into the adapters Install the […]

10.1-inch RPI All-in-One PC review with Raspberry Pi 4

10.1-inch Raspberry Pi PC portrait mode

A couple of months ago I received “RPI All-in-One”, a 10.1-inch touchscreen display for Raspberry Pi boards, listed the specifications, checked out the package content, installed a Raspberry Pi 4 inside the display before booting my new all-in-one (AiO) PC successfully. I’ve now had time to spend more time with the PC/display and see how it performs under various conditions. I also tested HDMI and USB-C input features with a laptop and mini PC. Fan or fanless operation? After updating Raspberry Pi OS, I ran sbc-bench.sh script together with rpi-monitor to see how the Raspberry Pi 4 with 1GB RAM would perform under load with the (noisy) fan enabled.

  No throttling was detected, and the temperature never exceeded 56°C in a room with an ambient temperature of 26°C. I then disconnect the fan, but it turns out the fan can also be easily disabled in the OSD menu […]

EDATEC Raspberry Pi 5 fanless case